A Marriage Of Convenience
by Scarlet Secret
Summary: When the government enforce marriage for the sake of repopulating the country Thomas Barrow and Sarah O'Brien do the only logical thing they can think of: marry their gay best friend.


A/N: Anyone familiar with the Harry Potter fandom will recall the odd sub-genre of fics about enforced marriage to repopulate (generally with a means to a Hermione/Snape or Hermione/Draco ship) and I thought it was about time such things appeared in Downton!

* * *

Once everyone knows about Anna and Bates actually being newlyweds – the news is somewhat overshadowed by Bates being taken away to spend his honeymoon at his majesty's pleasure – it becomes something of a joke between them that they should go next. Thomas said before the war, before the Titanic even, that he could never marry a woman but she didn't count so if it came to it and they made a law then he'd bite the bullet and she'd do. Sadly it's the best offer she'd had in years.

Nearly ten years later there _is_ a bloody law and Thomas thinks there really is someone up there laughing at him. Well, he'll have the last bloody laugh. The government might be forcing men and women to get married to repopulate the country but he can get himself a wife that'll chop his balls off before she goes near them which is the best case scenario really. And he knows what she's like even if the others don't snicker about it like they sometimes do with him. Blimey, he thinks he must have known before she did and he didn't need to watch her fanny about like an alley cat protecting a pointless American kitten through the war to work it out neither.

They keep it to themselves. He wonders briefly whether she's going to tell the Countess or if there's any need to, but with Mary all but dragging Carlisle down the aisle to stop herself getting shoved together with some random, half-formed bloke, Sybil running off with Branson to Gretna Green and Edith, rather wonderfully he thinks, being the one left over for Matthew to make do with, Cora Crawley's got her own problems to worry about. It's not been enforced in their class quite so strictly yet but it will be soon, so the first chance he gets he takes Miss O'Brien to the registry office that he supposes Bates must have used and feels rather smug that at least he'll be able to look after _his_ wife. Just another reason to consider himself superior to the bloody cripple and god help him, if he hadn't pounced on Miss O'Brien, the only decent woman for miles, they might have shoved him with Daisy or Ethel!

She's dressed up for the occasion, or as much as Miss O'Brien ever dresses herself for any occasion, and seems to have found a white shirt from somewhere which makes them both snicker on the bus as they smoke out the window and ignore the annoyed looks from a nearby woman with a baby. It's then, and only then, that it occurs to him they might be in trouble when they don't produce children, but when he raises this slight problem with Miss O'Brien he's met with a sniff he has learnt means she's thinking and moment after the solution comes as it always does.

"Gas exposure. We'll say it made you funny... I doubt anyone'll want to think about it that much at any rate. I certainly don't."

She's got a point on both accounts. People only seemed to care when they're doing wrong anyway.

They had to dodge Hughes and Carson because whilst this is technically her afternoon off it isn't his, although the old sods won't be able to do much when they come back as the Barrows and they've obeyed the law before anyone else below stairs. They'll be bloody _examples_ and he tells her this as he leans over her to blow more smoke out of the window. She rolls her eyes but smirks around the cigarette and doesn't move her eyes from the woman with the baby. He looks round for just a second to make sure he's not missing something interesting and instead finds nothing but a baby being sweet in the way babies were. He panics for a moment.

"You don't really want one do you?"

"Y'what?"

"Want a baby?"

He thinks if her stare was any harder than her eyes would freeze in their sockets and he internally kicks himself for how stupid a question it was. If O'Brien had ever had a maternal bone in her body then it was long buried and not something he liked to think about; he supposed it was how most blokes would approach a sister: it was nice to know they were there but thinking about them having any kind of sexual intercourse was nothing short of criminal.

"Don't be so soft. I'm just watchin' 'er beggar about with feeding that poor little sod. I don't think she'd got a drop of the milk in 'is mouth yet and if she carries on like this he'll be starved eventually."

He follows her gaze and for a moment has a brief pang at the gurgling baby looking up at his mother with absolute love and trust but quickly pushes away. The last thing the world deserves in its devastated state is a baby that's got all their worst qualities rolled into one, the last thing Miss O'Brien wants is for him to come near her with anything more prominent than a cigarette in his pocket and the very last bleedin' thing _he_ wanted was to lose more parts of his anatomy.

They get off the bus and reach the registry office without commenting on what they're about to do because it's much easier that way. Finding the witnesses isn't difficult – there are always people milling around the town that can be coerced if they're stupid enough to think they're aiding true love – and soon enough they were leaving the registry office, both feeling a bit shell-shocked. Partly from the enormity of what they'd just done striking them a few hours too late, and partly because to make it look convincing he'd leaned in to kiss her cheek, she'd turned at the wrong moment and they'd ended up tasting the cigarette ash on the others lips. Not pulling a face of revulsion had been tricky on both their parts but they'd maintained the illusion of shyness in front of the registrar.

Walking the short distance between the bus and Downton, smoking heavily to quell the slight nausea, Thomas finally spoke again, breaking the vow of silence they'd both taken since their impromptu kiss.

"Well it could have been worse."

She shot him a sharp look and he wasn't sure if she was offended by his assessment or was preparing to be sick.

"I suppose at least they're not goin' to need to see the sheets tomorrow."

He swallowed deeply and drew on his cigarette, trying to look nonchalant but suddenly unable to think of anything but the last thing he saw at night being that godawful bloody nightcap.

* * *

Hehe, I have no excuse. I might write the reactions next.


End file.
